Corporate Queen Bee Syndrome

Mar 8, 2013

RUSH: This is International Women’s Day. Did you know that? It is. And I have here, I’ve been holding this in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers for, well, two-and-a-half hours here. From the Wall Street Journal, a story by Peggy Drexler. The author of the story is a woman, and the title of the story is, “The Tyranny of the Queen Bee.” And let me give you some pull quotes, just to set this story up. “Far from nurturing the growth of younger female talent, they push aside possible competitors by chipping away at their self-confidence or undermining their professional standing. It is a trend thick with irony: The very women who have complained for decades about unequal treatment now perpetuate many of the same problems by turning on their own.”

Women versus the sisters.

My friends, human nature is human nature. This is the thing that the feminist movement hated the most. The militant feminazis were just royally ticked off by human nature, and that was their target. They were unhappy with the way nature had treated them to begin with, and so they began their quest to try to alter basic human nature. And, by the way, this next statement is actually not mine, but it is a good theory. I forget who, it was some man that the feminazis all admired, who said that the big problem that the early militant feminists in the late sixties or early seventies made, was that rather than try to build upon the natural differences between men and women, they sought to make women more like men. The quest for power. The way to dress. The seeking of the CEO seat in the corporation. Joining all-male clubs and trying to horn in on that area, rather than using what they naturally had to their advantage.

In fact, the early feminazis resented women using what they naturally had. The worst thing the early feminazis — I kid you not, my friends, you may hate me for saying it, you may resent me for voicing it — the early feminazis resented attractive women using that aspect to get ahead, because not every woman is attractive, and therefore it’s unfair. And it’s not something you can really do much about. I mean, makeovers can do some kind of magic, but let’s face it — same thing with guys — not everybody’s born attractive. There’s some ugly people out there. But it matters more in our culture for women than it does men, and that just ticked ’em off.

That’s why I wrote Undeniable Truth #24, which, while it established me as a great thinker, also made me enemy and target number one of the feminists and their early acolytes. And that is: “Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of society.” It’s so elegant and simple, and it’s truth that I ended up being hated for it. Human nature is human nature, and the early feminists did their best to try to change that.

(interruption)

Well, you want examples? Okay, making little boys play with Barbie and painting their rooms pink and making little girls play with GI Joe and painting their rooms blue. You don’t think that that happened? TIME Magazine had a cover in 1998, I think, or ’96, somewhere around there, a cover story: “Men and Women Are Actually Born Different.” A cover story.

Now, the men at TIME Magazine were every bit the feminazis as the women. They got caught up in it. I mean, they did what they had to do. Feminism was a big Northeastern urban thing. They did what they had to do to get female comfort, so the definition of a real man became Alan Alda, Michael Kinsley. They actually ended up believing that men and women were actually the same. It was the corrupt culture of America that turned women into something different than men. It wasn’t human nature. They set out to try to prove this by turning little boys into girls and vice-versa. It didn’t work.

So now what’s happened, many women have acceded, have risen to the pinnacle of power in corporations, and this story is about how they try to keep other women from getting anywhere near ’em. They’re not mentoring them. They’re not inspiring them. They are undermining them, in many cases. Over 40 years of modern feminism, and there’s been no change in basic human nature and behavior. Women who advance do not help other women. They didn’t in the seventies, and they don’t now. Working women, if they have to be b-i-itches, they are, they will be. Whatever it takes, they’ll do it, just like men will.

They’re not part of a sisterhood when they get there. They’re not gonna open the doors and welcome other women in. It took them too much to get there. They’re not gonna share it. Just like men don’t. I mean, there may be natural mentoring and so forth, but nobody makes way for their competitor to overtake ’em. But the feminazis expected that to happen. There’s a bunch of liberals, share everything, nobody’s better than anybody, we’re all equal. So if one of you happens to become CEO, all of us are gonna be CEO. But that’s not the way it works.

“Kelly was a bright woman in her early 30s: whip-smart, well qualified, ambitious — and confused. Even a little frightened. She worked for a female partner in a big consulting firm. Her boss was so solicitous that Kelly hoped the woman — one of just a few top female partners — might become her mentor. But she began to feel that something was wrong. In meetings, her boss would dismiss her ideas without discussion and even cut her off in mid-sentence. Kelly started to hear about meetings to which she wasn’t invited but felt she should be. She was excluded from her boss’s small circle of confidants.

“What confused Kelly was that she was otherwise doing well at the firm. She felt respected and supported by the other senior partners. She had just one problem, but it was a big one. One of the male partners pulled her aside and confirmed Kelly’s suspicions: Her boss had been suggesting to others that Kelly might be happier in a different job, one ‘more in line with her skills.'”

What was happening was Kelly actually posed a threat to her boss, so her boss wanted to move her into some other place.

Now, Ms. Drexler, writing the piece says, “I met Kelly while I was conducting research on women in the workplace. She was trying to puzzle through what she had done wrong and what to do about it. (To protect the privacy of Kelly and others in the study, I refer to them here by first names only.) I wasn’t sure Kelly had done anything wrong, and I said so. As I told her, ‘You might have met a queen bee.'” Queen bee? What’s a queen bee? She had to tell her. “Having spent decades working in psychology, a field heavily populated by highly competitive women, I had certainly seen the queen bee before:

“The female boss who not only has zero interest in fostering the careers of women who aim to follow in her footsteps, but who might even actively attempt to cut them off at the pass. The term ‘queen bee syndrome’ was coined in the 1970s, following a study led by researchers at the University of Michigan — Graham Staines, Toby Epstein Jayaratne and Carol Tavris — who examined promotion rates and the impact of the women’s movement on the workplace.

“In a 1974 article in Psychology Today, they presented their findings, based on more than 20,000 responses to reader surveys in that magazine and Redbook. They found that women who achieved success in male-dominated environments were at times likely to oppose the rise of other women. This occurred, they argued, largely because the patriarchal culture of work encouraged the few women who rose to the top to become obsessed with maintaining their authority.

“Four decades later, the syndrome still thrives, given new life by the mass ascent of women to management positions.” Here it is again, the pull quote: “Far from nurturing the growth of younger female talent, they push aside possible competitors by chipping away at their self-confidence or undermining their professional standing. It is a trend thick with irony: The very women who have complained for decades about unequal treatment now perpetuate many of the same problems by turning on their” sisters.

This, again, is in the Wall Street Journal by Peggy Drexler. Let me tell you who she is. It’ll say here at the end. She “is an assistant professor of psychology in psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College [in New York] and the author, most recently, of ‘Our Fathers, Ourselves: Daughters, Fathers and the Changing American Family.'” (New Castrati impression) “Mr. Limbaugh, why you are spending so much time on this? Can we get back to the filibuster or talk about the sequester?”

Well, because, Mr. New Castrati, we’ve also talked this week about efforts to corrupt our culture that have taken place, efforts that have been underway to undermine the institutions and traditions that led to this nation’s greatness. I firmly believe that militant… See, “feminism” is like every other -ism in liberalism. At the top you have the really motivated, malcontent, committed, radical, extreme leaders. And then you’ve got the rank and file who may not have the slightest idea that there’s any politics at all in what’s going on.

To them, feminism is simply equal pay for equal work. Feminism is maternity leave. Feminism is, you know, being treated nicely. Feminism is a chance to succeed like the guys. Feminism is not having to see Playboy at the desk. But they don’t equate politics with it at all. As such, they’re used. So not all women are these militant, radical feminists. That’s why I’ve always said, “There’s only ever been about seven real feminazis.”

The women thought I was saying every feminist is. Gloria Steinem still hasn’t gotten over it. When this subject comes up on TV, my name comes outta her mouth. (Don’t try to visualize that.) Every time she’s on TV. They have no sense of humor. None. I mean, none. I once told a feminist that I had no problem at all with the women’s movement, especially when walking behind it. They didn’t think that was funny.